Project of the Day: The Garage

Maybe it's because of the springtime.

Maybe it's because the hectic pace we've been running at as a family has slowed considerably, leaving me actual "free time," including entire days in which I don't have to leave my house.

Maybe it's because I've been reading a fantastic book, The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want under Everything You Own by Joshua Becker--arguably the single best book on home organization/decluttering/minimalism I've ever read.

Maybe it's because, whether pregnant or not (I'm not), the nesting bug hits me every so often, and I must do something to satisfy it.

Whatever the reason, I spent time this past week doing significant cleaning and organization in three rooms of my house: Benjamin's, mine, and the garage.  I didn't take pictures of the first two rooms (but I will say that I am loving the fact that my room is so neat and peaceful these days!) :), but yesterday, as I attacked the horrendous mess in the garage, I did pull out the camera to document the transformation.

Here it was at the beginning of the day.

That pile of stuff on the floor included snow shovels, sleds, pool noodles, a car mat, bikes and helmets, lids for storage boxes, trash, a stroller I haven't used for Benjamin in a long time, and assorted other items.

What a mess!

It wasn't as if the whole garage floor was covered with it.

No, we've been able to keep one side clear so we could park one of our vehicles inside.  But when it was in the garage, there wasn't much room for walking around on either side of it!

I didn't have anything else pressing I needed to do yesterday, and I was very inspired to tackle this project and see how far I could get with it.  I had brought up this Jeep walker from my dad's basement, stuck Benjamin in it for the first time so he would be happy and safe (and truth be told, out of the way, because having a baby scoot through the mess on the garage floor wouldn't help one bit).  :)

And then I got to work.  Rather, we did.  The four middle kids (Josiah was away at the barbershop, helping Jeff) were good helpers, pitching in to do what they could and, when they weren't needed, having fun playing outside on a beautiful warm day.  It was a great arrangement for all of us.

When the task seemed overwhelming, I reminded myself that all I had to do was pick up one thing at a time--just one thing--then make a decision about what to do with it before going on to the next thing.  One item at a time, the mountain of junk started to shrink.

It was during this time that the neighbor boy, Jason, came over to play: and I had to laugh when he remarked innocently about how LONG it had been since we had cleaned out our garage--"it's been YEARS!"  :)

A break to fix a quick lunch for the kids to eat outside and to put Benjamin in bed for his nap, and then the work continued, and amazingly, we reached bare floor!  :)

David has a lot of experience sweeping since he does that job weekly at the barbershop, so he grabbed a broom and started working.  He did remark that it felt odd to sweep without wearing rollerblades!  (He always wears them at the barbershop.)  :)

What a pleasing sight to my eyes!  Open space where a big mess had been a few hours earlier!

I had told my kids this was Phase One of the garage project; as thrilled as I was with all we accomplished, there is still a whole lot of junk in the garage that needs to be sorted and gotten rid of!

But for the moment, it was rewarding to savor the progress we had made.  All that room!

Some of that open space disappeared when we had to put the bicycles and various other vehicles back in the garage.

I guess I'm the only one of the family that doesn't have a bike or trike or other means of transportation in this group, so that adds up to a lot of wheels.  :)

And even though those vehicles take up some of that valuable open space, it's definitely worth it to see the smiles on my kids' faces when they get to ride their bikes, like Moriah was doing on Shav's old bike with training wheels (and, although I didn't get a picture, Shav was doing on a bike without training wheels, since he is fully capable of that this spring).  :)

That grin more than makes up for the labor that went into this project!  :)